Vera Vratuša(-Žunjić)
FACULTY OF
PHILOSOPHY
1998ICb
“Participatory Research and Obstacles to its Implementation in Former European
‘Real- Socialist’ Societies” - The 9th Conference of the International Association
for the Economics of Participation, Bristol, UK, June
26th-28th1998 Programme & Abstracts,p.57
http://veravratusaesociology.wikispaces.com/biblio.html
PARTICIPATORY RESEARCH AND OBSTACLES
TO ITS IMPLEMENTATION IN FORMER "REAL -SOCIALIST" SOCIETIES
- nine theses
on the privatization, participation and participatory research
1. Preference
for the specific form of social ownership relations and corresponding regulation mechanism of participation in the distribution
of material wealth, power and esteem, is conditioned by interests of large social groups to maintain or to change their place and role in social division of
labor. Educated representatives of
particular fractions of main social groups articulate these interests in the
form of different, often confronted
legitimization ideologies.
This thesis I will illustrate on the
example of
Participation of workers and other
employed in the decision making at the work place became one of the central
ideas of the dominant legitimization ideology in former
Self-management discourse that invoked further democratization
and decentralization of the decision-making process, however, from the end of fifties became ever more
intensively and openly used as instrument for the transformation of the renewed idea of independent nation states’
building into the new legitimization ideology, preparing thus internal spiritual and judicial ground
for the violent destruction of multi-ethnic and multi- confessional federal
state External conditions were created by interests of big powers in post
Berlin wall fall uni-polar world, that did not need
and want any more to tolerate even the semblance of alternative, self-managing
model of social relations’ organization (Vratusa-Zunjic,
V., 1996: “The
Intrinsic Connection Between Endogenous and Exogenous Factors of Social (dis)Integration - a Sketch of Yugoslav Case”, Dialogue, Paris, No.22 and No.23, 1997,
7-25 and 3-37)
2. Main local social bearer of the abandonment of self-managing and
participation rhetoric and of the propagation of the re-privatization
process concerning the formerly nationalized and afterwards socialized private
property of the
Under the influence of the decades long
experience of activity and attained privileges in the framework of hybrid
plan-market self-managing economy, this social group is leaning towards neo-etatistic model
of enlarged production regulation.
3. Ever more significant local social bearers
of the privatization process are becoming the old and new “small” entrepreneurs that transform themselves over the
night into ever bigger capitalists in the conditions of war, inflation,
gray economy and lawlessness. More direct engagement in varied economic
activities and decades long experience in quasi-market operations, make this
social group prone to neo-liberal model of
social reproduction organization.
4. In spite of the severe, sometimes even
bloody mutual fight concerning the appropriation of control over former social and
state property, former members of nomenclature class and new private
entrepreneurs have also common interests.
They cooperate in the business of half-legal
and illegal privatization of social and state property through signing of
harmful agreements, devaluation and direct theft of existing social and state
capital. In this way are created conditions for as cheap as possible or even
moneyless takeover of enterprises by the management, their relatives and
political associates.
Common
interest of these two social groups is also enactment of such laws on enterprises and on work relations
that legalize quasi-dictatorial decision-making power of managers and owners,
and this not only in economy, but in institutions of culture and education as
well. These groups expect that in
this way their control of unpaid surplus labor reproduction and appropriation would evolve more
efficaciously.
5. Predominantly parasitic and compradore orientation of these social groups on quick
profit and speculative/unproductive activities, prevents realization of
proclaimed aim of privatization - restructuration of
economy and increase in the performance efficacy. Extreme concentration of
decision-making power, contrary to the
intentions, leads in time to the
drop in productivity. It provokes different forms of passive and active
resistance to the execution of orders by those that are completely excluded
from the process of key decision making.
6. Direct
producers are brutally struck by high rates of open and disguised unemployment in the conditions of war,
blockade, double-digit drop in production and accompanying drop in living
standard, but increase in the poverty diseases. Atomized, disorganized and divided along the qualification, income,
gender, ethnic, regional, political and even trade union demarcation lines,
they became easy pray for exploitation and domination from the side of the old
and new power block. Having rather bad experiences concerning the inefficacy of
only formal self-management in the past, they did not resist strongly enough to the abolishment of their earlier
constitutional rights to use and management of social property and to
participation in decision-making. Through the new legislature they are deprived not only of their at least
formal self-management rights, but of the relative employment security as well.
In the conditions of massive impoverishment, everyday fight for bare survival becomes the main preoccupation of the
majority of both employed and unemployed, so that there rests little time for
qualitatively higher demands for the participation in decision-making.
7. When the threshold of frustration tolerance is over-stepped, however,
complex economic, political, social and moral crisis can also stimulate the return
of the demand for participation in decision-making to the very top of the
political programs and actions of social movements and union organizations in
former countries of real socialism. In
the similar manner economic recession and fiscal crisis of the welfare state in
the countries of real capitalism,
stimulated a number of researchers and union activists to point out to the
democratic participation of employed as to the main human right based in work and not in property, and therefore consider it
to be the strategy of the trade union movement for the 21st century (Kester, G., Pinaud, H., (eds) 1995: Syndicats et
participation democratique - Scenario 21, L’Harmattan, Paris, 56-71).
If the workers’ unions would not
take initiative, there exists real danger that private employers and the
state would take advantage of this to adopt the idea of participation to their
own needs and to marginalize further
the autonomous union
organization of the employed.
8. Aiming at the promotion of realization of the
strategy of increase in participation of employed and all citizens in economic, political and social
decision-making, it is necessary to combine the action capacity of the trade
unions and scientific capacity of the university in the participatory research.
Social scientist as the possessors of "expert
power" in the partnership relationship with the interested workers and
other employed that posses little or no "material
power", should carry out researches aimed at the re-distribution of
the existing oligarchic decision-making relations. Partnership relation and "symmetrical communication"
during the research should stimulate the transformation of the usual
"research object" into the motivated "participating
subject" also after the research.
This is not to say that explicit
dedication to the change of power relations that tends to blend the role of
scientist and political activist does not pose any theoretical and practical
problems. On the contrary, these problems should be taken into consideration with
utmost care in every concrete situation. Participatory research can for
instance rise hopes of workers to be able to take
control of their own jobs. This hope can be brutally disappointed if the
enterprise goes bankrupt. Employees might even blame researchers for the loss
of their jobs and drop all interest in the idea of participation in decision
making.
Positivistic alternative to difficult
participatory research engagement of university members does not present the
expression of value neutrality, but the determination
to put one's expertise in the service of the maintenance of the existing
social power relations.
Participatory research should include:
a) the analysis of the law regulation in
order to demand necessary changes with the aim of enlargement of the formal
rights to participation in decision-making (thus should be avoided that newer
versions of for example General collective agreement be worse from the old ones
with respect to participation - the one published in Official Gazette RS No. 34/94 included entire paragraph VIII on
"Participation of workers in decision-making", that was completely
omitted form the one published in 1997); b) explorative research of attitudes toward the desirable organization of
relations within the enterprise, local community and the society at large; c)
explanative researches of factors that
enhance or block the development of democratic participation in
decision-making in different life spheres (until now there exists the greatest
number of studies relating to the impact of different privatization models on
the efficacy of the enterprise performance - there is enough evidence to
suggest that employee stockholding, participation in profit and decision making
positively influence the productivity and loyalty to the enterprise, but little
is known on the satisfaction of employees; d) making of studies of characteristic cases of economically
successful and unsuccessful enterprises, that should be put into the longitudinal and comparative perspective.
9. The main obstacle to implementation of so
conceived participatory research in former European real existing socialist
societies and in former real existing self-managing Yugoslavia is found in
actual absence of "material
power:" social bearers that would be willing and able to order and finance
such participatory research, and even less to apply its results in the
transformation of the existing social power relations. Another obstacle is
inherent to the capitalist mode of production - redistribution of participation in social power is limited by
imperatives of the maintenance of the optimal profit rate.